Home (2009) - full transcript
With aerial footage from fifty-four countries, 'Home' is a depiction of how Earth's problems are all interlinked.
Listen to me, please.
You're like me, a homo sapiens,
a wise human.
Life,
a miracle in the universe,
appeared around 4 billion years ago.
And we humans
only 200,000 years ago.
Yet we have succeeded in disrupting
the balance so essential to life.
Listen carefully to this
extraordinary story, which is yours,
and decide
what you want to do with it.
These are traces of our origins.
At the beginning, our planet
was no more than a chaos of fire,
a cloud
of agglutinated dust particles,
like so many similar clusters
in the universe.
Yet this is where
the miracle of life occurred.
Today, life, our life,
is just a link in a chain
of innumerable living beings
that have succeeded one another
on Earth over nearly 4 billion years.
And even today,
new volcanoes continue
to sculpt our landscapes.
They offer a glimpse of what
our Earth was like at its birth,
molten rock surging from the depths,
solidifying, cracking, blistering
or spreading in a thin crust,
before falling dormant for a time.
These wreathes of smoke
curling from the bowels of the Earth
bear witness
to the Earth's original atmosphere.
An atmosphere devoid of oxygen.
A dense atmosphere,
thick with water vapor,
full of carbon dioxide.
A furnace.
The Earth cooled.
The water vapor condensed
and fell in torrential downpours.
At the right distance from the sun,
not too far, not too near,
the Earth's perfect balance
enabled it to conserve water
in liquid form.
The water cut channels.
They are like the veins of a body,
the branches of a tree,
the vessels of the sap
that the water gave to the Earth.
The rivers tore minerals from rocks,
adding them to the oceans' freshwater.
And the oceans became heavy with salt.
Where do we come from?
Where did life
first spark into being?
A miracle of time,
primitive life forms still exist
in the globe's hot springs.
They give them their colors.
They're called archeobacteria.
They all feed off the Earth's heat.
All except the cyanobacteria,
or blue-green algae.
They alone have the capacity
to turn to the sun
to capture its energy.
They are a vital ancestor of all
yesterday's and today's plant species.
These tiny bacteria
and their billions of descendants
changed the destiny of our planet.
They transformed its atmosphere.
What happened to the carbon
that poisoned the atmosphere?
It's still here,
imprisoned in the Earth's crust.
Here, there once was a sea,
inhabited by micro-organisms.
They grew shells by tapping into
the atmosphere's carbon
now dissolved in the ocean.
These strata
are the accumulated shells
of those billions and billions
of micro-organisms.
Thanks to them, the carbon drained
from the atmosphere
and other life forms could develop.
It is life
that altered the atmosphere.
Plant life fed off the sun's energy,
which enabled it to break apart
the water molecule and take the oxygen.
And oxygen filled the air.
The Earth's water cycle
is a process of constant renewal.
Waterfalls, water vapor,
clouds, rain,
springs, rivers,
seas, oceans, glaciers...
The cycle is never broken.
There's always the same quantity
of water on Earth.
All the successive species on Earth
have drunk the same water.
The astonishing matter that is water.
One of the most unstable of all.
It takes a liquid form
as running water,
gaseous as vapor,
or solid as ice.
In Siberia, the frozen surfaces
of the lakes in winter
contain the trace of the forces
that water deploys when it freezes.
Lighter than water, the ice floats.
It forms a protective mantle
against the cold,
under which life can go on.
The engine of life is linkage.
Everything is linked.
Nothing is self-sufficient.
Water and air are inseparable,
united in life
and for our life on Earth.
Sharing is everything.
The green expanse through the clouds
is the source of oxygen in the air.
70% of this gas,
without which our lungs
cannot function,
comes from the algae that tint
the surface of the oceans.
Our Earth relies on a balance,
in which every being
has a role to play
and exists only through the existence
of another being.
A subtle, fragile harmony
that is easily shattered.
Thus, corals are born
from the marriage of algae and shells.
Coral reefs cover
less than 1% of the ocean floor,
but they provide a habitat for thousands
of species of fish, mollusks and algae.
The equilibrium of every ocean
depends on them.
The Earth counts time
in billions of years.
It took more than 4 billion years
for it to make trees.
In the chain of species,
trees are a pinnacle,
a perfect, living sculpture.
Trees defy gravity.
They are the only natural element
in perpetual movement toward the sky.
They grow unhurriedly toward the sun
that nourishes their foliage.
They have inherited
from these miniscule cyanobacteria
the power to capture light's energy.
They store it and feed off it,
turning it into wood and leaves,
which then decompose
into a mixture of water, mineral,
vegetable and living matter.
And so,
gradually,
soils are formed.
Soils teem with the incessant activity
of micro-organisms,
feeding, digging,
aerating and transforming.
They make the humus, the fertile layer
to which all life on land is linked.
What do we know about life on Earth?
How many species are we aware of?
A tenth of them?
A hundredth perhaps?
What do we know
about the bonds that link them?
The Earth is a miracle.
Life remains a mystery.
Families of animals form,
united by customs and rituals
that are handed down
through the generations.
Some adapt
to the nature of their pasture
and their pasture adapts to them.
And both gain.
The animal sates its hunger
and the tree can blossom again.
In the great adventure
of life on Earth,
every species has a role to play,
every species has its place.
None is futile or harmful.
They all balance out.
And that's where you,
homo sapiens, wise human,
enter the story.
You benefit from a fabulous
4-billion-year-old legacy
bequeathed by the Earth.
You are only 200,000 years old,
but you have changed
the face of the world.
Despite your vulnerability, you have
taken possession of every habitat
and conquered swathes of territory,
like no other species before you.
After 180,000 nomadic years,
and thanks to a more clement climate,
humans settled down.
They no longer depended
on hunting for survival.
They chose to live in wet environments
that abounded in fish,
game and wild plants.
There where land,
water and life combine.
Even today,
the majority of humankind
lives on the continents' coastlines
or the banks of rivers and lakes.
Across the planet,
one person in four
lives as humankind did
6,000 years ago,
their only energy that which nature
provides season after season.
It's the way of life
of 1.5 billion people,
more than the combined population
of all the wealthy nations.
But life expectancy is short
and hard labor takes its toll.
The uncertainties of nature
weigh on daily life.
Education is a rare privilege.
Children are a family's only asset
as long as every extra pair of hands
is a necessary contribution
to its subsistence.
Humanity's genius
is to have always had a sense
of its weakness.
The physical strength, with which
nature insufficiently endowed humans,
is found in animals that help them
to discover new territories.
But how can you conquer the world
on an empty stomach?
The invention of agriculture
turned our history on end.
It was less than 10,000 years ago.
Agriculture
was our first great revolution.
It resulted in the first surpluses
and gave birth to cities
and civilizations.
The memory of thousands of years
scrabbling for food faded.
Having made grain the yeast of life,
we multiplied the number of varieties
and learned to adapt them
to our soils and climates.
We are like every species on Earth.
Our principal daily concern
is to feed ourselves.
When the soil is less than generous
and water becomes scarce,
we are able
to deploy prodigious efforts to extract
from the land
enough to live on.
Humans shaped the land with the patience
and devotion the Earth demands
in an almost sacrificial ritual
performed over and over.
Agriculture is still
the world's most widespread occupation.
Half of humankind tills the soil,
over three-quarters of them by hand.
Agriculture is like a tradition handed
down from generation to generation
in sweat, graft and toil,
because for humanity
it is a prerequisite of survival.
But after relying on muscle-power
for so long, humankind found a way
to tap into the energy
buried deep in the Earth.
These flames are also from plants.
A pocket of sunlight.
Pure energy.
The energy of the sun,
captured over millions of years
by millions of plants
more than 100 million years ago.
It's coal. It's gas.
And, above all, it's oil.
And this pocket of sunlight freed
humans from their toil on the land.
With oil began the era of humans
who break free
of the shackles of time.
With oil, some of us
acquired unprecedented comforts.
And in 50 years, in a single lifetime,
the Earth has been
more radically changed
than by all previous generations
of humanity.
Faster and faster.
In the last 60 years,
the Earth's population
has almost tripled.
And over 2 billion people
have moved to the cities.
Faster and faster.
Shenzhen, in China,
with hundreds of skyscrapers
and millions of inhabitants,
was just a small fishing village
barely 40 years ago.
Faster and faster.
In Shanghai,
3,000 towers and skyscrapers
have been built in 20 years.
Hundreds more are under construction.
Today, over half of the world's
7 billion inhabitants
live in cities.
New York.
The world's first megalopolis
is the symbol of the exploitation
of the energy the Earth supplies
to human genius.
The manpower of millions of immigrants,
the energy of coal,
the unbridled power of oil.
America was the first
to harness the phenomenal,
revolutionary power of "black gold".
In the fields,
machines replaced men.
A liter of oil
generates as much energy
as 100 pairs of hands in 24 hours.
In the United States,
only 3 million farmers are left.
They produce enough grain
to feed 2 billion people.
But most of that grain
is not used to feed people.
Here, and in all other
industrialized nations,
it is transformed into livestock feed
or biofuels.
The pocket of sunshine's energy
chased away the specter of drought
that stalked farmland.
No spring escapes
the demands of agriculture,
which accounts for 70%
of humanity's water consumption.
In nature, everything is linked.
The expansion of cultivated land
and single-crop farming
encouraged
the development of parasites.
Pesticides, another gift
of the petrochemical revolution,
exterminated them.
Bad harvests and famine
became a distant memory.
The biggest headache now
was what to do with the surpluses
engendered by modern agriculture.
But toxic pesticides
seeped into the air,
soil, plants,
animals, rivers and oceans.
They penetrated the heart of cells
similar to the mother cell
shared by all forms of life.
Are they harmful to the humans
they released from hunger?
These farmers
in their yellow protective suits
probably have a good idea.
Then came fertilizers,
another petrochemical discovery.
They produced unprecedented results
on plots of land thus far ignored.
Crops adapted to soils and climates
gave way to the most productive
varieties and easiest to transport.
And so, in the last century,
three-quarters of the varieties
developed by farmers
over thousands of years
have been wiped out.
As far as the eye can see,
fertilizer below, plastic on top.
The greenhouses of Almeria, Spain,
are Europe's vegetable garden.
A city of uniformly sized vegetables
waits every day
for hundreds of trucks to take them
to the continent's supermarkets.
The more a country develops,
the more meat its inhabitants consume.
How can growing worldwide demand
be satisfied without recourse
to concentration camp-style
cattle farms?
Faster and faster.
Like the life cycle of livestock,
which may never see a meadow.
Manufacturing meat faster than
the animal has become a daily routine.
In these vast foodlots,
trampled by millions of cattle,
not a blade of grass grows.
A fleet of trucks from every corner
of the country brings tons of grain,
soy meal and protein-rich granules
that will become tons of meat.
The result is that
it takes 100 liters of water
to produce 1 kilogram of potatoes,
4,000 liters for 1 kilo of rice
and 13,000 liters for 1 kilo of beef.
Not to mention the oil guzzled
in the production process and transport.
Our agriculture
has become oil-powered.
It feeds
twice as many humans on Earth,
but has replaced diversity
with standardization.
It gives many of us comforts
we could only dream of,
but it makes our way of life
totally dependent on oil.
This is the new measure of time.
Our world's clock now beats
to the rhythm of indefatigable machines
tapping into the pocket of sunlight.
The whole planet is attentive
to these metronomes
of our hopes and illusions.
The same hopes and illusions
that proliferate along with our needs,
increasingly insatiable desires
and profligacy.
We know that the end of cheap oil
is imminent,
but we refuse to believe it.
For many of us,
the American dream is embodied
by a legendary name.
Los Angeles.
In this city
that stretches over 100 kilometers,
the number of cars is almost equal
to the number of inhabitants.
Here, energy puts on a fantastic show
every night.
The days seem no more
than a pale reflection of nights
that turn the city into a starry sky.
Faster and faster.
Distances are no longer
counted in miles, but in minutes.
The automobile shapes new suburbs,
where every home is a castle,
a safe distance
from the asphyxiated city centers,
and where neat rows of houses
huddle around dead-end streets.
The model of a lucky-few countries
has become a universal dream
preached by TVs all over the world.
Even here in Beijing,
it is cloned, copied and reproduced
in these formatted houses
that have wiped pagodas off the map.
The automobile has become the symbol
of comfort and progress.
If this model were followed
by every society,
the planet wouldn't have 900 million
vehicles, as it does today,
but 5 billion.
Faster and faster.
The more the world develops,
the greater its thirst for energy.
Everywhere, machines dig, bore
and rip from the Earth
the pieces of stars buried
in its depths since its creation...
Minerals.
As a privilege of power,
80% of this mineral wealth
is consumed
by 20% of the world's population.
Before the end of this century,
excessive mining will have exhausted
nearly all the planet's reserves.
Faster and faster.
Shipyards churn out oil tankers,
container ships and gas tankers
to cater for the demands
of globalized industrial production.
Most consumer goods travel
thousands of kilometers
from the country of production
to the country of consumption.
Since 1950, the volume of international
trade has increased 20 times over.
90% of trade goes by sea.
500 million containers
are transported every year.
Headed for the world's major hubs
of consumption,
such as Dubai.
Dubai is a sort of culmination
of the Western model,
a country where the impossible
becomes possible.
Building artificial islands in the sea,
for example.
Dubai has few natural resources,
but with oil money it can bring in
millions of tons of material
and workers from all over the planet.
Dubai has no farmland,
but it can import food.
Dubai has no water, but it can afford
to expend immense amounts of energy
to desalinate seawater and build
the world's highest skyscrapers.
Dubai has endless sun,
but no solar panels.
It is the totem to total modernity
that never fails to amaze the world.
Dubai is like the new beacon
for all the world's money.
Nothing seems further removed
from nature than Dubai,
although nothing depends on nature
more than Dubai.
Dubai is a sort of culmination
of the Western model.
We haven't understood that
we're depleting what nature provides.
Since 1950, fishing catches
have increased fivefold
from 18 to 100 million metric tons
a year.
Thousands of factory ships
are emptying the oceans.
Three-quarters of fishing grounds
are exhausted,
depleted or in danger of being so.
Most large fish have been fished
out of existence
since they have no time to reproduce.
We are destroying the cycle of a life
that was given to us.
At the current rate, all fish stocks
are threatened with exhaustion.
Fish is the staple diet
of one in five humans.
We have forgotten
that resources are scarce.
500 million humans
live in the world's desert lands,
more than the combined population
of Europe.
They know the value of water.
They know how to use it sparingly.
Here, they depend on wells
replenished by fossil water,
which accumulated underground
back when it rained on these deserts.
25,000 years ago.
Fossil water also enables crops
to be grown in the desert
to provide food for local populations.
The fields' circular shape derives
from the pipes that irrigate them
around a central pivot.
But there is a heavy price to pay.
Fossil water
is a non-renewable resource.
In Saudi Arabia,
the dream of industrial farming
in the desert has faded.
As if on a parchment map,
the light spots on this patchwork
show abandoned plots.
The irrigation equipment
is still there.
The energy to pump water also.
But the fossil water reserves
are severely depleted.
Israel turned the desert
into arable land.
Even though these hothouses
are now irrigated drop by drop,
water consumption continues
to increase along with exports.
The once mighty River Jordan
is now just a trickle.
Its water has flown to supermarkets
all over the world
in crates of fruit and vegetables.
The Jordan's fate is not unique.
Across the planet,
one major river in ten
no longer flows into the sea
for several months of the year.
Deprived of the Jordan's water,
the level of the Dead Sea goes down
by over one meter per year.
India risks being the country
that suffers most
from lack of water
in the coming century.
Massive irrigation
has fed the growing population
and in the last 50 years,
21 million wells have been dug.
In many parts of the country,
the drill has to sink every deeper
to hit water.
In western India,
30% of wells have been abandoned.
The underground aquifers
are drying out.
Vast reservoirs will catch monsoon rains
to replenish the aquifers.
In the dry season, local village women
dig them with their bare hands.
Thousands of kilometers away,
You're like me, a homo sapiens,
a wise human.
Life,
a miracle in the universe,
appeared around 4 billion years ago.
And we humans
only 200,000 years ago.
Yet we have succeeded in disrupting
the balance so essential to life.
Listen carefully to this
extraordinary story, which is yours,
and decide
what you want to do with it.
These are traces of our origins.
At the beginning, our planet
was no more than a chaos of fire,
a cloud
of agglutinated dust particles,
like so many similar clusters
in the universe.
Yet this is where
the miracle of life occurred.
Today, life, our life,
is just a link in a chain
of innumerable living beings
that have succeeded one another
on Earth over nearly 4 billion years.
And even today,
new volcanoes continue
to sculpt our landscapes.
They offer a glimpse of what
our Earth was like at its birth,
molten rock surging from the depths,
solidifying, cracking, blistering
or spreading in a thin crust,
before falling dormant for a time.
These wreathes of smoke
curling from the bowels of the Earth
bear witness
to the Earth's original atmosphere.
An atmosphere devoid of oxygen.
A dense atmosphere,
thick with water vapor,
full of carbon dioxide.
A furnace.
The Earth cooled.
The water vapor condensed
and fell in torrential downpours.
At the right distance from the sun,
not too far, not too near,
the Earth's perfect balance
enabled it to conserve water
in liquid form.
The water cut channels.
They are like the veins of a body,
the branches of a tree,
the vessels of the sap
that the water gave to the Earth.
The rivers tore minerals from rocks,
adding them to the oceans' freshwater.
And the oceans became heavy with salt.
Where do we come from?
Where did life
first spark into being?
A miracle of time,
primitive life forms still exist
in the globe's hot springs.
They give them their colors.
They're called archeobacteria.
They all feed off the Earth's heat.
All except the cyanobacteria,
or blue-green algae.
They alone have the capacity
to turn to the sun
to capture its energy.
They are a vital ancestor of all
yesterday's and today's plant species.
These tiny bacteria
and their billions of descendants
changed the destiny of our planet.
They transformed its atmosphere.
What happened to the carbon
that poisoned the atmosphere?
It's still here,
imprisoned in the Earth's crust.
Here, there once was a sea,
inhabited by micro-organisms.
They grew shells by tapping into
the atmosphere's carbon
now dissolved in the ocean.
These strata
are the accumulated shells
of those billions and billions
of micro-organisms.
Thanks to them, the carbon drained
from the atmosphere
and other life forms could develop.
It is life
that altered the atmosphere.
Plant life fed off the sun's energy,
which enabled it to break apart
the water molecule and take the oxygen.
And oxygen filled the air.
The Earth's water cycle
is a process of constant renewal.
Waterfalls, water vapor,
clouds, rain,
springs, rivers,
seas, oceans, glaciers...
The cycle is never broken.
There's always the same quantity
of water on Earth.
All the successive species on Earth
have drunk the same water.
The astonishing matter that is water.
One of the most unstable of all.
It takes a liquid form
as running water,
gaseous as vapor,
or solid as ice.
In Siberia, the frozen surfaces
of the lakes in winter
contain the trace of the forces
that water deploys when it freezes.
Lighter than water, the ice floats.
It forms a protective mantle
against the cold,
under which life can go on.
The engine of life is linkage.
Everything is linked.
Nothing is self-sufficient.
Water and air are inseparable,
united in life
and for our life on Earth.
Sharing is everything.
The green expanse through the clouds
is the source of oxygen in the air.
70% of this gas,
without which our lungs
cannot function,
comes from the algae that tint
the surface of the oceans.
Our Earth relies on a balance,
in which every being
has a role to play
and exists only through the existence
of another being.
A subtle, fragile harmony
that is easily shattered.
Thus, corals are born
from the marriage of algae and shells.
Coral reefs cover
less than 1% of the ocean floor,
but they provide a habitat for thousands
of species of fish, mollusks and algae.
The equilibrium of every ocean
depends on them.
The Earth counts time
in billions of years.
It took more than 4 billion years
for it to make trees.
In the chain of species,
trees are a pinnacle,
a perfect, living sculpture.
Trees defy gravity.
They are the only natural element
in perpetual movement toward the sky.
They grow unhurriedly toward the sun
that nourishes their foliage.
They have inherited
from these miniscule cyanobacteria
the power to capture light's energy.
They store it and feed off it,
turning it into wood and leaves,
which then decompose
into a mixture of water, mineral,
vegetable and living matter.
And so,
gradually,
soils are formed.
Soils teem with the incessant activity
of micro-organisms,
feeding, digging,
aerating and transforming.
They make the humus, the fertile layer
to which all life on land is linked.
What do we know about life on Earth?
How many species are we aware of?
A tenth of them?
A hundredth perhaps?
What do we know
about the bonds that link them?
The Earth is a miracle.
Life remains a mystery.
Families of animals form,
united by customs and rituals
that are handed down
through the generations.
Some adapt
to the nature of their pasture
and their pasture adapts to them.
And both gain.
The animal sates its hunger
and the tree can blossom again.
In the great adventure
of life on Earth,
every species has a role to play,
every species has its place.
None is futile or harmful.
They all balance out.
And that's where you,
homo sapiens, wise human,
enter the story.
You benefit from a fabulous
4-billion-year-old legacy
bequeathed by the Earth.
You are only 200,000 years old,
but you have changed
the face of the world.
Despite your vulnerability, you have
taken possession of every habitat
and conquered swathes of territory,
like no other species before you.
After 180,000 nomadic years,
and thanks to a more clement climate,
humans settled down.
They no longer depended
on hunting for survival.
They chose to live in wet environments
that abounded in fish,
game and wild plants.
There where land,
water and life combine.
Even today,
the majority of humankind
lives on the continents' coastlines
or the banks of rivers and lakes.
Across the planet,
one person in four
lives as humankind did
6,000 years ago,
their only energy that which nature
provides season after season.
It's the way of life
of 1.5 billion people,
more than the combined population
of all the wealthy nations.
But life expectancy is short
and hard labor takes its toll.
The uncertainties of nature
weigh on daily life.
Education is a rare privilege.
Children are a family's only asset
as long as every extra pair of hands
is a necessary contribution
to its subsistence.
Humanity's genius
is to have always had a sense
of its weakness.
The physical strength, with which
nature insufficiently endowed humans,
is found in animals that help them
to discover new territories.
But how can you conquer the world
on an empty stomach?
The invention of agriculture
turned our history on end.
It was less than 10,000 years ago.
Agriculture
was our first great revolution.
It resulted in the first surpluses
and gave birth to cities
and civilizations.
The memory of thousands of years
scrabbling for food faded.
Having made grain the yeast of life,
we multiplied the number of varieties
and learned to adapt them
to our soils and climates.
We are like every species on Earth.
Our principal daily concern
is to feed ourselves.
When the soil is less than generous
and water becomes scarce,
we are able
to deploy prodigious efforts to extract
from the land
enough to live on.
Humans shaped the land with the patience
and devotion the Earth demands
in an almost sacrificial ritual
performed over and over.
Agriculture is still
the world's most widespread occupation.
Half of humankind tills the soil,
over three-quarters of them by hand.
Agriculture is like a tradition handed
down from generation to generation
in sweat, graft and toil,
because for humanity
it is a prerequisite of survival.
But after relying on muscle-power
for so long, humankind found a way
to tap into the energy
buried deep in the Earth.
These flames are also from plants.
A pocket of sunlight.
Pure energy.
The energy of the sun,
captured over millions of years
by millions of plants
more than 100 million years ago.
It's coal. It's gas.
And, above all, it's oil.
And this pocket of sunlight freed
humans from their toil on the land.
With oil began the era of humans
who break free
of the shackles of time.
With oil, some of us
acquired unprecedented comforts.
And in 50 years, in a single lifetime,
the Earth has been
more radically changed
than by all previous generations
of humanity.
Faster and faster.
In the last 60 years,
the Earth's population
has almost tripled.
And over 2 billion people
have moved to the cities.
Faster and faster.
Shenzhen, in China,
with hundreds of skyscrapers
and millions of inhabitants,
was just a small fishing village
barely 40 years ago.
Faster and faster.
In Shanghai,
3,000 towers and skyscrapers
have been built in 20 years.
Hundreds more are under construction.
Today, over half of the world's
7 billion inhabitants
live in cities.
New York.
The world's first megalopolis
is the symbol of the exploitation
of the energy the Earth supplies
to human genius.
The manpower of millions of immigrants,
the energy of coal,
the unbridled power of oil.
America was the first
to harness the phenomenal,
revolutionary power of "black gold".
In the fields,
machines replaced men.
A liter of oil
generates as much energy
as 100 pairs of hands in 24 hours.
In the United States,
only 3 million farmers are left.
They produce enough grain
to feed 2 billion people.
But most of that grain
is not used to feed people.
Here, and in all other
industrialized nations,
it is transformed into livestock feed
or biofuels.
The pocket of sunshine's energy
chased away the specter of drought
that stalked farmland.
No spring escapes
the demands of agriculture,
which accounts for 70%
of humanity's water consumption.
In nature, everything is linked.
The expansion of cultivated land
and single-crop farming
encouraged
the development of parasites.
Pesticides, another gift
of the petrochemical revolution,
exterminated them.
Bad harvests and famine
became a distant memory.
The biggest headache now
was what to do with the surpluses
engendered by modern agriculture.
But toxic pesticides
seeped into the air,
soil, plants,
animals, rivers and oceans.
They penetrated the heart of cells
similar to the mother cell
shared by all forms of life.
Are they harmful to the humans
they released from hunger?
These farmers
in their yellow protective suits
probably have a good idea.
Then came fertilizers,
another petrochemical discovery.
They produced unprecedented results
on plots of land thus far ignored.
Crops adapted to soils and climates
gave way to the most productive
varieties and easiest to transport.
And so, in the last century,
three-quarters of the varieties
developed by farmers
over thousands of years
have been wiped out.
As far as the eye can see,
fertilizer below, plastic on top.
The greenhouses of Almeria, Spain,
are Europe's vegetable garden.
A city of uniformly sized vegetables
waits every day
for hundreds of trucks to take them
to the continent's supermarkets.
The more a country develops,
the more meat its inhabitants consume.
How can growing worldwide demand
be satisfied without recourse
to concentration camp-style
cattle farms?
Faster and faster.
Like the life cycle of livestock,
which may never see a meadow.
Manufacturing meat faster than
the animal has become a daily routine.
In these vast foodlots,
trampled by millions of cattle,
not a blade of grass grows.
A fleet of trucks from every corner
of the country brings tons of grain,
soy meal and protein-rich granules
that will become tons of meat.
The result is that
it takes 100 liters of water
to produce 1 kilogram of potatoes,
4,000 liters for 1 kilo of rice
and 13,000 liters for 1 kilo of beef.
Not to mention the oil guzzled
in the production process and transport.
Our agriculture
has become oil-powered.
It feeds
twice as many humans on Earth,
but has replaced diversity
with standardization.
It gives many of us comforts
we could only dream of,
but it makes our way of life
totally dependent on oil.
This is the new measure of time.
Our world's clock now beats
to the rhythm of indefatigable machines
tapping into the pocket of sunlight.
The whole planet is attentive
to these metronomes
of our hopes and illusions.
The same hopes and illusions
that proliferate along with our needs,
increasingly insatiable desires
and profligacy.
We know that the end of cheap oil
is imminent,
but we refuse to believe it.
For many of us,
the American dream is embodied
by a legendary name.
Los Angeles.
In this city
that stretches over 100 kilometers,
the number of cars is almost equal
to the number of inhabitants.
Here, energy puts on a fantastic show
every night.
The days seem no more
than a pale reflection of nights
that turn the city into a starry sky.
Faster and faster.
Distances are no longer
counted in miles, but in minutes.
The automobile shapes new suburbs,
where every home is a castle,
a safe distance
from the asphyxiated city centers,
and where neat rows of houses
huddle around dead-end streets.
The model of a lucky-few countries
has become a universal dream
preached by TVs all over the world.
Even here in Beijing,
it is cloned, copied and reproduced
in these formatted houses
that have wiped pagodas off the map.
The automobile has become the symbol
of comfort and progress.
If this model were followed
by every society,
the planet wouldn't have 900 million
vehicles, as it does today,
but 5 billion.
Faster and faster.
The more the world develops,
the greater its thirst for energy.
Everywhere, machines dig, bore
and rip from the Earth
the pieces of stars buried
in its depths since its creation...
Minerals.
As a privilege of power,
80% of this mineral wealth
is consumed
by 20% of the world's population.
Before the end of this century,
excessive mining will have exhausted
nearly all the planet's reserves.
Faster and faster.
Shipyards churn out oil tankers,
container ships and gas tankers
to cater for the demands
of globalized industrial production.
Most consumer goods travel
thousands of kilometers
from the country of production
to the country of consumption.
Since 1950, the volume of international
trade has increased 20 times over.
90% of trade goes by sea.
500 million containers
are transported every year.
Headed for the world's major hubs
of consumption,
such as Dubai.
Dubai is a sort of culmination
of the Western model,
a country where the impossible
becomes possible.
Building artificial islands in the sea,
for example.
Dubai has few natural resources,
but with oil money it can bring in
millions of tons of material
and workers from all over the planet.
Dubai has no farmland,
but it can import food.
Dubai has no water, but it can afford
to expend immense amounts of energy
to desalinate seawater and build
the world's highest skyscrapers.
Dubai has endless sun,
but no solar panels.
It is the totem to total modernity
that never fails to amaze the world.
Dubai is like the new beacon
for all the world's money.
Nothing seems further removed
from nature than Dubai,
although nothing depends on nature
more than Dubai.
Dubai is a sort of culmination
of the Western model.
We haven't understood that
we're depleting what nature provides.
Since 1950, fishing catches
have increased fivefold
from 18 to 100 million metric tons
a year.
Thousands of factory ships
are emptying the oceans.
Three-quarters of fishing grounds
are exhausted,
depleted or in danger of being so.
Most large fish have been fished
out of existence
since they have no time to reproduce.
We are destroying the cycle of a life
that was given to us.
At the current rate, all fish stocks
are threatened with exhaustion.
Fish is the staple diet
of one in five humans.
We have forgotten
that resources are scarce.
500 million humans
live in the world's desert lands,
more than the combined population
of Europe.
They know the value of water.
They know how to use it sparingly.
Here, they depend on wells
replenished by fossil water,
which accumulated underground
back when it rained on these deserts.
25,000 years ago.
Fossil water also enables crops
to be grown in the desert
to provide food for local populations.
The fields' circular shape derives
from the pipes that irrigate them
around a central pivot.
But there is a heavy price to pay.
Fossil water
is a non-renewable resource.
In Saudi Arabia,
the dream of industrial farming
in the desert has faded.
As if on a parchment map,
the light spots on this patchwork
show abandoned plots.
The irrigation equipment
is still there.
The energy to pump water also.
But the fossil water reserves
are severely depleted.
Israel turned the desert
into arable land.
Even though these hothouses
are now irrigated drop by drop,
water consumption continues
to increase along with exports.
The once mighty River Jordan
is now just a trickle.
Its water has flown to supermarkets
all over the world
in crates of fruit and vegetables.
The Jordan's fate is not unique.
Across the planet,
one major river in ten
no longer flows into the sea
for several months of the year.
Deprived of the Jordan's water,
the level of the Dead Sea goes down
by over one meter per year.
India risks being the country
that suffers most
from lack of water
in the coming century.
Massive irrigation
has fed the growing population
and in the last 50 years,
21 million wells have been dug.
In many parts of the country,
the drill has to sink every deeper
to hit water.
In western India,
30% of wells have been abandoned.
The underground aquifers
are drying out.
Vast reservoirs will catch monsoon rains
to replenish the aquifers.
In the dry season, local village women
dig them with their bare hands.
Thousands of kilometers away,